Meet the Robinsons a film adaptation of A Day with Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce (1990)
The book written and illustrated by William Joyce was based on his childhood in Shreveport, the science fiction movies he enjoyed watching and the cartoons he loved. It has the sweet domestic experiments with science in the form of curiously sensible philosophical inventions, the fox terrier, twisted comedy sensibility and the music he had heard by Ellington and Louis Armstrong were particularly infused into the book.
The book was rewritten by Jon Bernstein and Michelle Spritz, directed by Steven J. Anderson and produced by Dorothy McKim.
The storyline is based on a young orphan called Lewis whose dream is to
belong to a family and has a difficult time in being adopted. Lewis meets a strange kid by the name of Wilbur Robinson who claims to be from the future and whisks him away to the future, were their adventure unfolds.
Semantic Analysis
A horrible rainstorm brings a stranded mother to the doorstep of an orphanage, were she abandons her son Lewis. Mildred steps out after a calm knock is heard at the door, to find lying in a basket a child crying. She takes Lewis in to the orphanage there raises him, while hopefully awaiting his adopted.
Here we have a tragic beginning to unfold the plot were Paul Thibault's semiotic system langue2 evolves using sign types, with opposition of forms in syntagmatic and association groups with cross coupling . This is depicted by the two opposite characters, a mother abandoning her child, leaving him to a fate unknown, and Mildred who runs an orpanage, taking in the child to nurture and care for him. The affection is portrayed visually, when no words are spoken, just soft sentimental music and a crying baby are heard in the background with dim lighting depicting the mood on the set.
Pascal Lefevre sites that it is hard to have a film adaptation because the reception of a book as compared to it film counterpart, differ in that, the creative scenes of the film are done by a group of writers, photographers, directors, actors, editors and the like, using a bigger budget. There sometimes is the case were deletion and additions are made by the writers to make emphasis on a subject matter or scene as seen in this picture were there storyline is changed.The translation of drawing to photography is clearly distinguished, as we can see, but not hear, thus the added sound is also of importance, it enhances the emotional aesthetic to the film and the audience can hear and watch as the film caters for a larger audience capacity as compared to the silent epic which limits readership and visual pragmatics.
Lewis grows up, aspiring to become a great inventor, though his inventions fail. His roommate Michael Yagoobian(Goob) is a tyke with a propensity for sarcastic one liners which hit home.
Here the story moves from a social semiotic to a humorous twist with the introduction of the sarcastic roommate who in this scene introduce comic relief. This is achieved by Goobs' disjointed stream of conscious speech construction, when he reflects on his dreams of becoming a future baseball star, which proves crippling and exploitable, while Lewis' determination in constructing his latest invention also cripples his perception of failure and the lack of forward thinking.
The hallmark of Lewis' invention is the Memory Scanner, which extracts one's memory and display them on a screen. It is pieced together by old household hardware. As necessity is the mother of invention, Lewis' invention has an ulterior motive, which is to locate his mother and surprisingly turns out to be climax of the plot.
The Bowler Hat Guy, a canny, sinister antagonist from the future, travels back to Lewis' time to steal the Memory Scanner and here the plot thickens, with an overplayed villainous buffoonery, portrayed by Goob's character, who meets his future self, the Bowler Hat Guy, portrayed with an ingrained childhood mindset that is manipulated easily by outside influence, ultimately transcends and compliments the wacky time travel adventure. Where we meet very vibrant, extreme eccentric personalities in the future, with a rich arrays of colour in the form of landscape and futuristic buildings. A robot house helper called Carl, who in the book is depicted as Wilbur's robot, an octopus as the butler, coupled by innovative transportation, which ranges from flying cars which enable time travel, uncle Arts' flying saucer, cousin Laszlo's anti-gravity device and vacuum tube elevators that take you from one place of the house to another.
In conclusion the story ends with order restored when Lewis returns to the present, gets adopted and become a successful inventor while the future gives Lewis a glimpse of Goob's ambition and a reflection of his selfishness, a change of fate occurs with Lewis now helping Goob win the little league, when he catches the ball, which causes the team to win the little league. All ends well like a happily ever after epic.
Reference:
http://djfowlie.blogspot.com/2008/01/dvd-review-meet-robinsons-2007.html
http://www.avclub.com/content/cinema/meet_the_robinsons
http://www.flipsidemovies.com/meettherobinsons.html
http://www.comicbookbin.com/Meet_The_Robinsons_3030.html
the focus is on the character action which can vary in position depending on the action done, though as stated by Taylor it is always in the center of the screen even though the center of the screen can some times be the borders. Re-tracing or re-covering certain spaces in the game is required to be done by the player in order to continue the game's narrative, this mostly happens when the player loses a life in the game therefore causing the player to start play from the beginning.
he game does give an overall placement within the larger story, though the individual relationship of the panels on a certain level does change the understanding of the story.
A Visual Lexicon
